Secularism vs. Communalism Author - VT Joshi

The debate on secularism versus communalism is as old as the hills, metaphorically speaking. In recent times , with the Hindu dominated Bharatiya Janata Party in power, it has acquired a sharper focus.

Several serious journals and dailies have thrown up a discussion of the topic with animated comments and observations by noted writers and thinkers. There is food for thought in the bewildering variety of shades of opinion coming up.

Quite a number of questions, answered and unanswered, are thrown up in fascinating shapes and forms. One of the most ticklish posers raised is: Can India ever be a secular state? In the true or rather western sense of the term?

Yet another is: Are not the so-called secularists and communalists helping each other to keep alive and afloat by constantly harping on their pet theories as if the answer has perforce to be a straight "Yes" or "No"? Is there not enough scope for gray area? Must the protagonists always assume that everything is black or white in this regard? Are there no fascinating techni-colours in the mosaic of Indian culture and tradition?

Are the terms "Hinduism" and "Hindutva" (of the Advani-VHP brand) synonymous with each other? Or do they not also belong to the same "pseudo" variety as much as are the self-styled "secularists"? Is the role of the media, fully commercialized and marketized as it has been, conducive to helping (or harming) a resolution of the conflicts and contradictions?

Sometime back a learned Maulana observed that a multi-religious country like India, in which 99 percent of the people believe in and practise one faith or the other, can never be a secular country. The debate was carried to an interesting level by two prominent commentators -- Amulya Ganguli, a regular columnist of Hindustan Times, and Mark Tully, former BBC correspondent, -in their articles in the same paper on September 22 and October 1 respectively.

Ganguli, whose bias against the BJP and Sangh parivar frequently stands out in most of his articles, argues in his article -"Batting for the BJP"--that the separation of the church and State, (a patently western origin of the concept of secularism), "is an even greater necessity in India than in the USA because India is a country with 4,635 communities, 325 languages and 24 scripts. It is the birthplace of four major religions-Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism-not to mention the animistic cults of tribals, and is home to Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism..It is the height of absurdity, therefore, to claim that secularism is unsuitable for India - and blame Nehru for it, as Gurcharan Das of "India Unbound fame" does in (Mark Tully's), documentary".

In his rejoinder Mark Tully observes that it is his "thesis that for many secularists any mention of Hinduism (wrongly) implies support for Hindutva". He asks: ".why did Ganguli think a film advocating a very India tradition of pluralism was calling for the primacy of Hinduism? I think because he has made the mistake of assuming the false alternative. This involves seeing everything in terms of opposites. It is very un-Indian because India always treats certainty with suspicion. Assuming the false alternative means being so certain of your own position that you assume anyone who differs in any way is advocating the exact opposite." False alternatives, Tully points out, are very prevalent in journalism too where everything has to be in black and white, and a fight between two radically opposed points of view "is a good story".

"Because I criticised the way Nehruvian secularism has developed, he assumed I was advocating its exact opposite (the establishment of a theocratic state)", Tully observed, and argued that it was the "trap of false alternative" Ganguli fell into.

Very recently in an animated discussion an ardent secularist passionately argued that the RSS parivar must be "thanked for keeping Mahatma Gandhi alive". He failed to realize that the converse is also equally true --- that the self-styled secularists who keep on hammering, day in and day out, their "ideology", or whatever they conceive to be their "ideology", are no less responsible for keeping the "parivar" alive. Neither side realizes that the two have exposed each other's glaring weaknesses and assumptions in no uncertain manner. Instead of trying to find a common ground to help resolve the conflicts facing the polity in the interest of the larger national good they keep virtually railing at each other in futile, untiring public postures in their political game of one-upmanship.

At a more mundane level, an instant case in point is provided against the backdrop of the State Assembly Elections to be held on December one in Madhya Pradesh and three other States in central and northern India. As the polling day approaches, the MP Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, and his inveterate opponent, saffron clad Uma Bharti, are reported to be vying with each other in visiting temples in various parts of the State to appease their Gods and Goddesses. They vow their bovine love for the protection of the ubiquitous cow. In the process they have accused each other of "stealing" their respective ideologies! And both are right and wrong at once. The weak, emaciated roaming cattle are not the brand name of either the Congress or the BJP nor are all the temples a special preserve of the Hindutva party.

As the electoral reckoning draws near, some of the bizarre episodes involving Uma Bharti refuse to die down and continue to stir a hornet's nest. Like, for instance, those of Uma Bharti feeding a birthday "cake" to the Hanuman idol in a temple on the last Hanuman Jayanti day, or her taking away the symbolic sword from a temple in Ujjain as an "auspicious omen" for her, and later hurriedly restoring it to the shrine after criticism by Congress men as her "anti-Hindu" act.

Nothing escapes notice and provides an opportunity for condemnation as "anti-Hindu" by either the Congress or the BJP. Both have specialized in pointing an accusing finger at each other wholly on the basis of their acts as either "pro-Hindu" or "anti-Hindu"-- as though nothing else matters to the electorate.

The saffron lady's latest stupidity is however a class apart: that of her (subsequently aborted) dinner invitation to a group of senior bureaucrats and police officers ostensibly to celebrate the Dusserah festival. Interestingly, the invitation card from the self-styled sanyasin, who is touted as BJP's chief ministerial candidate, read inter alia: "Your administrative and my political responsibilities are going to increase in the near future...."

Again their respective protagonists and supporters are arguing endlessly on some hoary aspects of history: Whether or not Babar decreed against cow slaughter, and advised his son Humayun not to interfere with the religious faith and practices of the Hindus? Or whether or not Aurangzeb provided funds for certain quantity of ghee to keep a lamp lit in perpetuity in the famous Mahakaal temple at Ujjain? A mention of this historical fact by MP chief minister brought a ton of bricks on him from the diehards in the BJP who miss no opportunity to declare Hinduism as their own special brand equity with their own premateur and copyright. They accused Digvijay Singh of "appeasing" Aurangzeb to attract Muslim votes in the ensuing elections. And both sides pretend to be "not dragging religious matters into electoral politics".

Most parties and organizations, including the Congress and the BJP, have long been invariably resorting to the practice of "lighting" the traditional lamp, considered auspicious, at the inauguration of every little public or official function almost everywhere in the country. Is it secular or communal?

(Incidentally in Pakistan each and every function, even a press conference, begins with the invocation of "Bismillah Rehman Rahim...." Once it so happened that the Pakistan Korean Friendship Society organized a function to celebrate the Korean National Day, and began it with the Pakistani National Anthem instead of the customary "Bismillah Rehman." The Pak Minister who was the Chief Guest walked out in protest, and no amount of persuasion by the organizers that the national anthem was as good as the usual Bismillah invocation was of avail to pacify the angry minister. This happened during the Zia ul Haq regime in the late 1980s')

Tailpiece: Way back in the mid 1950s' a hard-boiled Anglo-Indian news editor of The Times of India, the late Mr. D. F. Thomas, rarely concealed his abhorrence of everything Hindu and Hinduism. When he and Mrs. Thomas were blessed with a baby daughter, he stunned his colleagues by naming the newborn as "Champa". To their bewilderment, he explained that after the partition, India would be a "Hindu dominated" country. Hence he chose a Hindu name for his daughter. Did he anticipate Narendra Modi?

VT Joshi

12 October, 2003

VT JOSHI (1925-2008) worked for more than fifty years as a journalist. He retired from THE TIMES OF INDIA in 1989. During 1985-89 he was the Special Correspondent of THE TIMES OF INDIA in Pakistan. His books "PAKISTAN: ZIA TO BENAZIR" and "INDIA AT CROSS ROADS" (co-author GG Puri) were widely reviewed in both India and Pakistan.

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